The Chipped Cup
by Crysania
Summary: Tumblr prompt: Dark Castle : Rumpel tells Belle he wants to drink from the chipped cup from now on.


The day after she chips the cup, she finds the tea set where it always is, the chipped cup still sitting with the others. She makes the tea, brings it out to where Rumplestiltskin sits, the lone occupant of a table that's far too large for just one person. He looks lonely there, the very image of isolation, the monster haunting his castle, the beast in its lair. But he drinks tea in the afternoons and that cannot mean he's all bad.

She worries that he'll see the cup. He was kind about its being nothing important, but she doesn't want to chance his anger in case he decides her breaking it was graver than he first let on. So she pours his tea and carefully places the teapot so that the cup with the chip on its rim is hidden from his view. It's better not to risk his anger.

Not that she's seen him angry so far. He's mostly ignored her, occasionally said something snarky about her abilities. But he's not shown a real temper and his easy response to her breaking one of his possession leads her to believe her time with him would not be quite so bad as she had imagined after he had thrown her in the dungeon that first evening.

"Is there anything else, sir?" She watches as he carefully brings the cup to his lips, takes a sip. She starts. "Wait…wasn't that..."

"What?" The question is innocently asked and Belle has no response. She had _hidden _the cup with the chip on it. She had taken great pains to make sure he had a cup that was undamaged, yet the one he just took a sip from, the one he is carefully cradling in both hands, has a large chip out of the rim. She glances down, picks up the cup hidden behind the teapot and sees that it is whole and unblemished. "Don't you have something to dust?" he asks suddenly.

She's sure the sneering words hide something, but she's not sure what exactly. "Of course, sir." She stammers slightly over the words and sets the cup down. She shakes her head as she moves off. Next time she'll simply remove it from the set all together.

And she does.

A few days later she's serving him his afternoon tea again. The set is missing one cup when she brings the tray out to him. He glances down briefly at it as she pours the tea and frowns. When she hands him the cup she almost chokes. There's that damned chip again.

Her eyes meet his and his are shuttered, giving nothing away. There are three cups remaining on the tray and she _knows_ she left the chipped one behind. It had still been sitting on the table near the stove when she brought the tray in. "Why?" she asks.

"Why what?" he responds with, taking a sip of tea before setting the cup down. He's as enigmatic as always. Belle just rolls her eyes and picks up her duster to return to her chores. He's not going to give her a proper answer. This much she knows after only a short while there. He deflects whenever he doesn't want to answer, giving her a blank look or a quip. She supposes it's easier that way for him. He doesn't have to reveal anything of himself and she suspects that's the way he wants it.

It's a few weeks later and Belle feels like they're starting to get to know each other. At least a little. He's taken to making small quips to make her laugh. He's told her stories about the items that she's been dusting in the main room, sometimes making her laugh over the ridiculous antics of those he's dealt with, sometimes making her tear up when he speaks so eloquently about people's desperation and his ability to give them what they want. She remembers well what it was like to be so desperate, to make a deal with one they considered a demon for protection from creatures so much worse than even he is supposed to be.

She serves him tea and this time when she arrives there's a second seat. Rumplestiltskin says nothing about its sudden appearance, of course. She doesn't expect him to. Things just _happen_ in the castle and rarely does he say a word about it. She's learned not to question him after she found the door to the dungeon opening on a pretty little room on the second floor. She asked, then. He told her he knew nothing of what she spoke of, and went to the dungeon with her. To find it was still a dungeon. She found the room on the second floor during her explorations and when she found the dungeon locked to her that evening, she went to the room to sleep. It has been hers ever since and Rumplestiltskin simply pretends she still sleeps in the dungeon.

But once in awhile she sees a softening about his mouth, a certain look in his eyes. And she _knows_. He's trying to play at being the big bad Dark One. And he fails with her. But he can't have that reputation sullied, so he pretends. He's not a very good actor, this Dark One. Good help is hard to find, indeed. The Dark One no doubt needs _no_ help. Half the time she finds there are no chores to do about the place. And when she really stops to think about it, it makes sense. Why would the most powerful sorcerer the world had ever known need a _maid_? Her people had never questioned that. She hadn't either until she realized that her "cleaning" was almost entirely unnecessary. By the end of the first month, she's spending most of her time reading and trying to figure out Rumplestiltskin.

The former is easy. The latter is not.

She hides the chipped cup in a number of places and every time she serves him tea, the cup with the chip in the rim is in his hand. She may have poured the tea into an unblemished one, but that is not the one he raises to his lips. It almost becomes a game. She throws the cup out. It shows up for his afternoon tea. She tosses it outside into the snow. He is drinking from it when she serves him tea the next morning. She buries it in mud and finds it sitting next to him late in the evening as he works on his potions. It is, of course, clean, as if it had never been buried deep in a mud puddle, tossed out into the rain, buried beneath the seaweed of the pond. She's poured ink into it, left onions sitting in it, done everything she could think of, yet it always appears, perfectly clean, as if nothing had ever happened to it. She sometimes wonders why he doesn't fix the chip, if he can do everything else he's done to it.

It's late at night and Rumplestiltskin requests tea as he does sometimes when he's spinning late into the evening. He does that more often these days, quietly sitting at the wheel. She doesn't know why but she doesn't ask for fear of the answer. And so that night she brings him his tea. She almost leaves the chipped cup behind but sighs as she puts it on the tray with the others. There seems to be no point to hiding it. She wonders what would happen if she smashed it into millions of pieces. She suspects it would _still_ be in his hand when she serves him the tea. So this time she gives up and pours the tea into the cup.

He looks down at it for a moment and a small smile forms on his face. "It's chipped." He glances up at her through the masses of unruly hair that fall into his eyes.

"It's just a cup," she responds with, memories of their early days flooding her. Tiptoeing around him, worrying that she would anger him, making a mess of the kitchen and panicking as she tries to clean it before he finds out what she's done. "We've come a long way since that first week." The words are murmured.

"Have we?" He's evasive as always, but Belle knows otherwise. They _have_ come a long way.

She lifts her own cup to her lips. "Yes. I think we have."

He doesn't respond, simply looks down at his cup. They finish their tea in silence that was once awkward but has become companionable over the couple months she's been there. When they're done, she gathers up the tea set, placing the chipped cup alongside the unblemished one she's been using.

She turns to leave and is surprised to feel Rumplestiltskin's hand lightly touch her lower arm. It's the first time he's been the one to breach the gap between them, the first time he's touched her of his own free will and not because Belle reaches out to him first. Her eyes meet his and she sees that same shy smile on his face he had the first time she hugged him.

"Leave the cup."

Belle looks at the tea tray and picks up the cup. "Why?"

"It's my cup." He sounds almost belligerent. She raises one eyebrow.

"Yours?"

"Yes. And I'll not have you tossing it out in the mud anymore." He turns away, but before he does, she can see the small smile playing about his lips.

"Of course." She leaves then, shaking her head. Sometimes she's sure she'll never quite figure him out. But she does love a good mystery and she won't stop trying to solve this particular one.


End file.
